Active Yogi: Prevent Injury with Balanced Hips

In my latest Active Yogi post, a complement to the overview of hip stretches, I describe ways to build strength in the hips to cultivate balance.

All sports injuries are the result of some kind of imbalance. Sometimes you literally lose your balance and fall, causing an acute injury like a sprained ankle or torn ACL. More insidiously, training itself can develop an imbalance between strength and flexibility that leads to an overuse injury like patellar tendonitis or piriformis syndrome. To correct such muscular imbalance in your body, you need to open any constricted areas—those where you don’t have enough flexibility to move easily—and to strengthen the relatively weak areas.